Save Fort Ross

The crisis forced California Government to dramatically cut down the funds for the State Parks and so Fort Ross State Historic Park is now in danger of being closed. We understand that this was unfortunate and hard decision that our lawmakers had to make but Fort Ross is not just "another" typical State Park where you can bring your family for a weekend to relax and grill some sausages - it's part of our American History.

In nowadays American and Russian visitors, volunteers, and helpers come to "Fort Ross", the museum under the sky. The park is open for Cultural Heritage Days and is the point where two cultures interweave naturally. There people from many backgrounds meet, and the relaxed and beautiful site of the open air museum helps to promote understanding between nations.

This place is especially important for the young generation. There are interactive educational programs for children. As a part of the overnight trips at Fort Ross, students, dressed in XIX century costumes, adopt the names of people who lived in the settlement and study this page of local and Russian history through enacting various aspects of the life at this time. American youth get to know more about the different people who lived here; and Russian children who live in America feel their roots and their belonging to the rich Russian culture through Fort Ross.

This is our responsibility to preserve the memory about the people who lived in California before us and to pass this information to our children. Please sign the following simple petition to save this beautiful piece of our history: http://makefortrossnationalmonument.us/index.html

Also here you can Learn Russian - Free Lessons Online.

Swedish is loaded

Today Swedish language lessons have been loaded. They are without audio yet but we are going to start working on audio pronunciation as soon as possible.

Ah, by the way, recently we loaded Amharic sounds.

How to do translation for polyglot vocabulary - Instructions

This is an article that describes how to do the instruction of Internet Polyglot vocabulary.

• You will receive an Excel file, it will contain multiple tabs
• First tab is "Lessons" - a list of all lessons
• Other tabs are particular lessons
• While translating tab "Lessons": each cell contains lesson name and description divided by "|" sign. When you translate - do the same, separate lesson name and description by |. Don't translate word-to-word, make it sound natural for your language. Some humor is useful too.
• Individual lesson tabs (ANIMAL, PLANT, etc.). Each tab will have some words in two or more languages. Let's say you are translating to Spanish from English and French. You have to make sure that your translation works both with English and French counterparts. If you can't find a word that corresponds to both of them - skip it, just don't enter anything.
• On lessons tabs translation should be precise - use the word that is the best (don't give a line of possible synonyms).
• If you don't know how to translate a word - just skip it! It's better to skip it than to give an incorrect translation.
• Articles. Most of languages have articles. For example, in Spanish it is necessary to put articles because they indicate the gender of a noun. Decide what article to put in each case (definite or indefinite) according to your language rules.
• Adjectives - if your language have different adjective forms for different genders, use masculine form.

Most important rule: if in doubt (i.e. there is no exact translation or there are too many translations) - skip it!

First translate a couple of tabs and send me an intermediate result so that I could verify correctness and give my feedback.

Amharic is loaded

Huge thanks to our volunteer Lulit for translating our words to Amharic. Amharic, according to Wikipedia, is "is a Semitic language spoken in North Central Ethiopia by the Amhara. It is the second most spoken Semitic language in the world, after Arabic, and the official working language of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia."

Also, "Many Rastafarians learn Amharic as a second language because they consider it to be a sacred language, and even the original language."

If you can't see the font, here is a page that can help you: Can't see Amharic font? , for me personally (I use Windows XP and Vista), the following installation worked perfectly: GF Zemen self install

What's next? This Saturday I am going to meet Lulit and record audio for those lessons. Stay tuned!